“I believe there’s something queer about this joint,” repeated Turpin.
“I don’t see it,” said the captain.
“I know it looks like a pool-room, all right,” persisted Turpin, “but that’s all a blind. Vivien has been dropping a lot of coin somewhere. I believe there’s some underhanded work going on here.”
A number of racing sheets were tacked close together, covering a large space on one of the walls. Turpin, suspicious, tore several of them down. A door, previously hidden, was revealed. Turpin placed an ear to the crack and listened intently. He heard the soft hum of many voices, low and guarded laughter, and a sharp, metallic clicking and scraping as if from a multitude of tiny but busy objects.
“My God! It is as I feared!” whispered Turpin to himself. “Summon your men at once!” he called to the captain. “She is in there, I know.”
At the blowing of the captain’s whistle the uniformed plain-clothes men rushed up the stairs into the pool-room. When they saw the betting paraphernalia distributed around they halted, surprised and puzzled to know why they had been summoned.
But the captain pointed to the locked door and bade them break it down. In a few moments they demolished it with the axes they carried. Into the other room sprang Claude Turpin, with the captain at his heels.
The scene was one that lingered long in Turpin’s mind. Nearly a score of women—women expensively
